SCSU At 150: KVSC Trivia Weekend a 40 Year Tradition

ST. CLOUD -- St. Cloud State University is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year and once a month archivist Tom Steman comes on the News @ Noon Show to talk about the rich history of the school.

Tuesday the topic was the tradition of the KVSC Trivia weekend. The 50-hour trivia contest started in 1980. It was started as a way to entertain the students in residence halls in late winter.

KVSC Station Manager Jo McMullin-Boyer says in the early years' dedicated players sometimes had to go to extreme lengths to hear the radio signal.

When they started playing they could get the signal in their office in Minneapolis, so they had the radio playing in their office, phone up to it, and they dialed it to the house and they listened to it through the telephone line out to where they were competing, because at that time there was no streaming of the internet.  People who were really into it were willing to do all sorts of maneuvers to get the signal.

The first year that they streamed the signal was 2000. By 2007 a record 80 teams participated from all over the world.

Steman says the trivia contest is an important part of the school's history.

The connection that the contest has to the university and the community is tremendous.  I think it's one of the best traditions that St. Cloud State has, that and the Lemonade Art Fair.

This year's KVSC Trivia weekend starts this Friday at 5:00 p.m. and runs through Sunday at 7:00 p.m. Teams will tackle more than 450 questions with the theme "Trivia University" in honor of the SCSU sesquicentennial.

It will be broadcast on KVSC radio, UTVS TV, and on Charter Channel 180.

You can still sign-up a team until 4:30 p.m. on Friday.  The cost for a community team is $50, college and high school teams are free.